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I was a dancing chicken outside a local chicken roasters restaurant for one summer, while in high school.
A friend of mine worked there as a cook and he recommended me for the job because of my theater background. (And because HE didn’t want to do it.) I met with the manager to discuss my fee and he wanted to start me at $12. It was my first meeting with someone who wanted to hire me for an “acting” gig, so I bluffed him and got $15 an hour for a 4 hour shift a day (shorter hours were fine for me.) and a meal before I left each day. I didn’t have to cook or clean or serve people, just dance in my worn-out, threadbare, chicken costume by the side of the road, waving at cars passing through the busy intersection.
It was a tough, terrible job. And I was WAY too into it. Nobody at the chicken roasters had every done the job with enthusiasm before. It was always the shit job that they were forced to do. Stand by the side of a busy interstate, waving at cars going by. But I looked at it as an acting job and was so young that I took it pretty seriously. (I also romantically dreamed that I would become a local sensation, “The Fabulous Dancing Chicken”, maybe earning some media attention for my fancy footwork. Alas, this did not happen.)
I did elaborate pantomimes out there and danced my chicken ass off. I would not only wave a handful of balloons at passing cars but work to get laughs from people stopped at the stoplight. I would take pictures of them with pantomimed cameras and (try to) breakdance for them. So much energy. So much creativity. So unfocused.
When things got too hot for me, and this was summer in a yellow fur costume, I’d go back into the restaurant, hitting the kids at the tables and giving them a little show, and then I would hide out in the walk in freezer, peeling the costume off to freeze my sweat-soaked t-shirt and sipping on a ginormous sweet tea. Ten minutes later, I would suit up and go back out for more shenanigans.
Once, I was doing a bit for a family who were eating chicken and watching me. I pantomimed leaning on the handicapped parking sign, only putting the barest bit of weight on it. But it was rusted throughout the base and I didn’t know that. It leaned a little bit and then broke, falling over onto the hood of someone’s parked car. I didn’t do any damage to the car, but it scared the shit out of me. I picked up the sign and ran off, a very guilty chicken. I hid it behind the walk in cooler and then had to tell the manager that I’d broken his sign. Whoever owned the car didn’t see me knock a big metal sign on it, because nobody complained about it.
I had large beverage drinks thrown at me by passing cars, never with any accuracy. People told me to go “fuck [myself]” and “eat my ass, chicken!” and stuff like that. I got mooned by someone with too much time on their hands. Too much abuse and I’d stop dancing and slink back to the cooler to hide for a bit.
Once, for a funny bit, I got onto a passing public transit bus and danced for the riders. It drove off with me trapped inside, too busy doing bits to see that we’d left the chicken roasters. When I realized what had happened, I was about 6 blocks down the highway. I got off and walked the whole way back, muttering profanity inside my chicken mask.
Twice I passed out from heat stroke. I just got light-headed and fell backwards, hitting my head on the asphalt parking lot. The impact woke me up instantly and I went in both times and sat down until I cooled off a bit. I bet that looked funny from inside the store. One minute he’s dancing, the next, Boom, he falls down for no reason.
The summer ended and I quit the job because school was back in session. This had to be the summer of 91 or 92. The last time I was in Louisville, this past march, 15 years later, we drove past the chicken roasters. They were still open for business and there was someone else out front, in the same wornout chicken costume, waving apathetically as we drove by.
One little bit of trivia for you, Brad Pitt had the very same job when he was a teenager at some California chicken joint. I learned that fact from Us magazine the same summer that I had the job. I thought, “Well, if Brad Pitt did it, how bad could it be?”
100% true.
101% pathetic.
Mr. B
That is EXACTLY what my suit looked like, only dingier from years of use and infrequent washings. Also, the rubber chicken feet were long gone. I wore red Chuck Taylors with my suit.
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